MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Emma Lee - The Staircase of Knives
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
The Staircase of Knives
Emma Lee
The only thing that's regular
is that there are two on each stair,
one at either end. She has to thread
her way past these kitchen knives
stabbed into the white-painted treads
to get to bed. She has to tip-toe:
if disturbed they will invade
her dreams and sharpen her nerves.
They are not the most chilling
thing in the photo posted by police.
That honour goes to the bullet.
Against the stark white,
its tip points to a blank wall.
This is someone's home,
"a place where one lives,
especially as part of a family."
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ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
ANDY CROFT welcomes the publication of an anthology of recent poems published by the Morning Star, and hopes it becomes an annual event
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
by Widad Nabi